Dai is known for posting eclectic photos on social media, including some showing himself and others scrunching up their lips and eyes. Dai posted images of Xi with the same expression while wearing a mustache.

Some online commentators have compared the Xi portrait to Adolf Hitler, although Dai's Instagram image has much broader mustache than the small, square-shaped, "toothbrush mustache" associated with Hitler...

In response, Xi angrily denied any similarity between himself and the late German Führer. (After which, he sentenced the artist to 10 years in a concentration camp.)